Meant For More
by AriMarvelUniverse
Summary: "Steve Rogers." the new recruit informed me, sticking out a delicate hand for me to shake. "I guess we're sharing bunks." I smirked and grabbed his hand, shaking slowly. This guy wasn't going to last a week here. Steve/OC. No Yaoi. Rating might go up.
1. Chapter 1

_You have got to kidding me right now._

That was the very first thing that ran through my mind when the Colonel introduced the new recruits to my barrack. It was all I could think, once I got a good look at HIM.

Don't get me wrong, most of them were just fine. They looked like the regular, muscle bound, brain dead Cro Magnon man soldiers that were paraded through the camp daily. Tall, burly, with glass eyed stares that only lit up when they were talking about their guns or the scores of poor kids they beat up in middle school. But there was one of them that was different- so different, I didn't believe he was a recruit until they announced his name. Actually, I missed him completely the first time.

**«»«»«»«»«»**

I stood next to my bunk mates at attention as Colonel Phillips called out the new names one by one. "Gilmore Hodge...Randall Jesse...Mike Rabioso...David Nowell..." On and on. I let my eyes skip over their faces, tuning in and out. We'd been gaining truckload after truckload of fresh meat for weeks, but they never seemed to last, washing out or quitting in days. I didn't have much hope for these ones.

"Perry Brown...and...Steven Rogers." The resentful disdain in the Colonel's voice when he hit that last name made me glance up and snap to attention. I looked at him first, and I almost choked on my laughter at the 'I-just-ate-shit' expression slathered all over his face. I did a quick head count of the newbies...then blinked and did it again. One more time.

Unless I was mistaken, one of them was missing. Either that, or I had suddenly forgotten how to count. The Colonel had named ten guys, but there were only nine bodies in line.

"Welcome to the 107th, gentlemen. May God be with you. I wish you… the best of luck." After delivering that hearty and sincere welcome (_yeah, not)_, Colonel Phillips turned on his shiny heel and walked out, and the new recruits started putting their stuff on their beds.

One of the guys, a real meat head named Hodge, shoved someone and moved, and that was when I saw him. The last recruit.

This guy was so small he could've been mistaken for a kid, or trampled in a large crowd. He had been at the end, hidden behind Hodge. I'm no beefcake, not by the longest long shot, but this guy was so SKINNY. When he was pushed, I half expected him to fall down and break. My little cousin could have beat him up for his lunch money- and Ricky has polio, for God's sake. Rogers-he had to be Rogers, it was the only name left- was pale and sickly looking, and quite frankly he looked like he has no business being anywhere near an Army encampment.

Aaaand he was headed right for me, and my bunk. Great.

"Hey there." he said shyly, holding out a delicate hand for me to shake. "Steve Rogers. I guess we're sharing bunks." I was a whole five inches taller than him. Despite his size, he was a nice looking fellow, with blonde hair and crystal blue eyes, and a nice smile set on an open, strong face.

I stuck out my hand and took his, shaking quick and hard, just like I'd taught myself. A man's handshake. "Scruffy Monroe." I answered. Scruffy was the nickname the other guys had given me due to the layer of dust and dirt constantly smeared across my face and skin. It was also the reason why I didn't have a bunkmate until previously, and the others razed me about being unclean, but that was a small price to pay for being able to keep my secret.

Rogers, apparently, wasn't buying it. "That's not your real name, is it?" he asked, the corner of his mouth pulling up into a little smile.

I rolled my eyes. "Chatty, aren't you?" And apparently, perceptive. Not an endearing combination. "Fine, you got me. It's Scott." I retorted, giving him the same name I'd given the elistment officer.

"Where are you from, Scott?" Seriously? I couldn't be this damned interesting.

I gritted my teeth. "Boston." Another lie.

Steve reached up to put his bag on his bed. He had to stretch up on his tippy tip toe to do it. Some of the other guys saw it and laughed at him, and I felt embarrassed for both of us. To his credit, Steve ignored the snickers and kept doing what he was doing. "Officially, I'm from Brooklyn." he said.

"Yippee for you." I mumbled, wishing he'd clam up already. It had been a long, hard day. My body was sore, my brain was fried, and I did not feel in the mood for this. I had never been one for stupid jibber jabber in the first place.

"Where's everybody going?" Steve asked, watching the other guys stand up and file out of the bunk.

"Dinner in the mess hall." I told him, standing up myself. "You don't want to be late for that, trust me. You'll be eating out of the trash."

Steve followed me out with a definite spring in his step, the setting sun lighting up his eyes and turning his hair orange. "I just can't wait until we start tomorrow." he tossed out. He'd clearly warmed up a little, though I had no clue why. I swear he looked like a squirmy puppy. "I still can't believe I finally got in."

I sighed and pushed open the mess hall door.

"_Really_? I'd have thought _you'd_ be a shoo in!"

He either missed my sarcasm, or he completely ignored it. "I know, right? I thought so too." He grinned, like we were sharing a private joke. I bristled, and he strode ahead into the dining hall, throwing me a little wave over his shoulder as he went and leaving me staring after him in complete disbelief.

He wasn't going to last a week here.


	2. Chapter 2

After Rogers walked away, I blinked and shook my head, going over to the second line to get my food. It looked and smelled like meat, with grey sauce and frozen apple juice. Typical army fare. I made sure the attendant filled my plate up with everything there was. I needed to bulk up, but no matter how much I ate, my stubbornly slim figure refused to spread out. It was compromising my cover.

I grabbed a tray and squirmed through the wall of sweaty soldiers and recruits to a table near the back, where some guys I kind of knew and occasionally said hi to were sitting.

One of them, an older soldier named Burgess, looked up and nodded as I slid into my seat. "Hey there, Scruffy." I glanced at him, grunted, and started shoving meat into my mouth. I used my hands and ignored my napkin, licking and smacking loudly so that lumpy gravy and saliva added to layer of nastiness to my face, further obscuring my features. Perfect. No female raised anywhere but the woods would ever eat like that, which is exactly why I did it.

Burgess watched me and grimaced, leaning away. "Don't you have any manners, kid?"

I glowered at him and rolled my eyes, swallowing to speak. "What are you, a girl?"

Burgess frowned, then laughed. "Guess it comes from having a wife at home." Thankfully, he turned away from me after that, and I sighed in silent relief. Most of the soldiers think I'm simply underaged, but they have no idea of the real situation. And I want to keep it that way.

Another guy with squinty, beady black eyes named Keaton started tearing his brownie to hunks with his thick fingers. "The Colonel looked like somebody shoved a Charelston Chew up his ass earlier, didn't he?" he said casually. Burgess snorted into his gravy, and I laughed aloud.

"Shut up, stupid. You'll get court marshalled. Although," Burgess said, after a, pause "I reckon he had a reason to, on account of the sorry state of those new recruits."

I wiped a smear of meat juice off my chin. "They didn't look too bad."

And it was true- most of them hadn't. Most.

Burgess seemed to read my mind, and he raised one grizzled grey eyebrow. "Yep...but what about him?" he said, nodding at something across the mess hall. "What business has him here, of all places?" I followed his gaze, and saw none other than my new best friend Steve Rogers shovelling his food.

He looked, if possible, even smaller sitting down, and from the back at this distance he resembled a six year old. For a wild moment, I wondered if he was even going to FINISH his food. He didn't look capable. I closed my eyes and moved my head slowly from side to side, watching as Hodge sauntered over and stood behind him. Deliberately, and very much on purpose, Hodge raised his arm and dropped his orange into Steve's plate, splattering him with soupy sauce. I winced, but Steve didn't jump up and clock Hodge like I thought. Instead, he just wiped himself off and went back to eating. Hodge sneered something at him and walked away.

"I have no idea." I sighed, turning back to my food. Burgess clicked his tounge. "Poor lad. He'll be crushed. It's a shame, really."

Keaton took a break from scarfing his dessert. "He's not a normal recruit. He's one of the Lab Rats."

I wrinkled my nose. "Lab Rats?"

Keaton smirked. "Yeah. That Jerry scientist that chats up the Colonel brought them here. He's some kind of Doctor Frankenstein- he's gonna turn them into some kind of soldier experiment."

"Experiment?"

"Yep. Like Superman or something- invulnerable, ya know."

I narrowed my eyes at him. "How in the hell so you know all of that?"

Keaton opened his mouth, but Burgess cut across him. "That's a bunch of hooey. Nobody can be invulnerable. You read too many comics, Keaton." he said gruffly. Keaton scowled and flipped him off when he wasn't looking, but went back to eating. The conversation dropped.

I snuck another glance at Steve, curious. What if Keaton wasn't full of crap? What if it was true, and Steve was really here to be some super covert agent soldier?

As I watched, he dropped his fork on the floor and bent over to get it. His arms were so short, they dangled an inch away from the utensil, and he went red in the face as he struggled to reach it, kicking his legs. I huffed and shook myself, smiling at my own momentary stupidity.

Super Soldier? Yeah, right.

«»«»

After dinner we all left the mess hall and went to the showers. I hung back, making sure I was one of the very last ones to go and that I would have a stall to myself before I went in. There were no doors, and the water was cold, so I stripped and scrubbed the important stuff like a maniac, shivering and cursing.

If it was up to me, I wouldn't bathe at all. But we have cleanliness quotas, and I know I'm already on the edge. If you don't smell at least acceptable, you get the hose. And no-one wanted the hose. NO ONE.

After I was clean, I wrapped my rough towel around myself and went to the exit. On the way out, I caught my reflection in one of the shaving mirrors, and I stopped. It had been a while since I really saw myself, and I stared.

A fierce young woman glared back, with bright blue eyes and dusky skin made pink from the cold scrubbing. Her thick black hair was cut in a boyish style, and there was a distinct Italian slope to her eyebrows and shape of her nose and mouth. With the dirt washed away, thin, pale scars stood out on her cheekbones, horizontal slashes like razor blades. There was a bruise on her chin, and a tiny chip in her front tooth.

I stared at the mirror for a long time before I realized that I was trying to find myself in the image. I had been a man for so long, it was a strange thing to see a girl where my face should have been. This wasn't Scott "Scruffy" Monroe. This was Sofia Marone, the oldest runaway daughter of two stiff Italian immigrants.

I didn't want to see the real me. I threw my uniform back on and went outside, making sure to scoop up a fresh handful of dirt and smear it across my damp face before going back to my barracks.

I WAS a soldier fighting for my country, not a little girl. I had made that distinction long ago to be on the front lines, not behind a stove wearing an apron and wringing my hands like my mother, waiting for that little blue consolation letter to arrive and tell me the inevitable.

I was useful and tough and just as good as these meatheads.

I was ready to kill some Nazis, and prove just how worthy I really was.


	3. Chapter 3

The bugle blasts woke us up right on time early the next morning, perfectly on schedule. Every day, the lieutenants stand directly in the middle of the barracks and blow their lungs into their trumpets like their damn lives depend on it, and their sole mission in life is to burst our eardrums to pieces.

Have I mentioned how much I hate mornings here? That's the only thing I miss about my old life- sleep. Back home, when my mother would take my brother and cousins to school, I would snooze until midmorning, until her gentle voice floated up the stairs to wake me up.

"Come on ladies, get those dreamin', sleazin', lazy asses up out of those beds! DOUBLE TIME! DOUBLE TIME! Don't make me get the speakers!"

If there's one thing I know, it's that Colonel Phillips is most definitely NOT my mother.

I groaned into my "pillow" and balled up the thin sheet in my fist, cursing life and everything about it as the other guys mumbled and hissed and struggled to get up. I would have given both my legs to be able to lay there for just ten more minutes. Amazingly, sleeping had made my soreness worse instead of better, and I was stiff as a board, like somebody had glued my joints together and left them to set overnight.

I opened my eyes, and wished I hadn't- at that very moment, some moron decided to open the blinds and let the sunlight in, completely BLINDING me.

Let me tell you, that did not help my mood. I yelped and threw my arms up to cover my face. "FUCK!" I rolled off my bunk like it was ablaze and staggered to my feet, rubbing my watering eyes. "What the hell is in your head, you stupid son of a _bitch!?_"

I would have gotten the skin beaten off my back for using that language at home, because it wasn't _ladylike_. But in the army, the better curser you were, the more of a man that made you. So you can guess just how much I cursed.

"Who opened the goddamed shades?!"

"Um...I did?" I forced my eyes open to glare at the idiot near the window, and found none other than shrimpy Steve, my new bunk mate. Go freaking figure. Steve blushed and dropped the cords to the shade. "I'm sorry, it was just...I figured it would wake everybody up. Hodge told me that's how it's done here."

Ah. Hodge. I glanced to the left, and found the meathead sniggering at his own wit. "Yeah, it woke us up, alright." I muttered. If it would have been anyone else, you can believe I would have kept right on abusing them. But I just couldn't keep doing it to Steve. He was so eager and pathetic, it just felt wrong.

I settled for an eye roll and reached for my dog tags, hooking them around my neck. The other guys grumbled and started to leave, shooting ugly looks at Steve as they passed. The new guy had just made himself really unpopular here.

I trotted out of the bunker and fell into line beside them, blinking in the early morning light. The camp was already up and at em around us. People milled around everywhere, doing important things with clipboards and jeeps and megaphones. The dust from the hard packed ground made a beige haze through the sunrise, and the air was cold and nippy on our bare arms. It smelled like gunpowder, artillery grease, cigarette smoke, and male musk. I sucked in a deep breath, inhaling the scent of army life.

The scent of freedom.

"Recruits, Atten-TION!" Automatically, we all snapped to attention and clasped our arms to our sides, making our backs ramrod straight. "Gentleman."

We looked up, and I was more than a little shocked to see a woman striding toward us in full army khaki. '_Is she supposed to be here?' _The unspoken question was loud and obvious in the mandated silence.

She was young, only a few years older than me, with perfectly fixed black hair, deep red lips, and a serious, no-nonsense-taken here face. A tingle of worry coiled in my gut, and I shifted so my helmet fell over my eyes. This lady looked important, and if she recognized me for what I really was, I was toast.

"I'm Agent Carter. I'll be supervising all operations for this division." she continued, in a manicured English twang. That only mystified me more. What was a lady Brit doing supervising anything in America's army?

Apparently, Hodge was thinking the same thing.

"What's with the accent, Queen Victoria?" he drawled from his place in line. "I thought I was signing up for the U.S army!"

Agent Carter pursed her lips. "What's your name, soldier?" she asked. Hodge smirked. "Gilmore Hodge, yer majesty."

What, was she going to court marshal him?

"Step forward, Hodge. Put your right foot forward."

We all glanced at him out the corners of our eyes, wondering what Miss Tea Time at Two had in mind. Hodge was about a foot wider than her in all directions.

Said meathead grinned a sleazy smile and did as she asked, tilting his head and eyeing her like a Tootsie Roll he was about to unwrap. "Ooh, are we gonna wrastle?" he rasped. "Cuz I got a few moves I _know_ you'll like."

And then the dumbass had the gall to WINK. I knew what was going to happen before it did.

Agent Carter wasted no time in slamming her fist right into his fat nose, shocking the hell out of everyone in line. Hodge dropped like a bag of boulders, and it took all of my spirit not to burst out laughing. Men. That's what he deserved.

As it was, a puff of air did get out of my nose, and I had to close my eyes and pretend to choke on a cough to keep from laughing. Another small sound made me crack them open. Further down the line, Rogers was laughing too. He grinned at me, and I rolled my eyes and turned away.

"Agent Carter!"

"Colonel Phillips."

I swallowed my laugh and faced front again, trying to shake the image of Hodge getting clocked from my mind. Colonel Phillips walked up right after I got my face in order and swept his eyes down the line. "I see you're breaking in the new recruits. That's good!" he exclaimed. He looked the same as always-old, bitter, stern, and lined. Not unlike my uncle Tony, just with more medals and less gas.

Phillips gazed down at Hodge with a stony expression. "Get your ass up out that dirt and stand to attention until somebody tells you otherwise." Hodge scrambled to his feet, plugging his bloody nose with his fingers. I was happy to see a bruise spreading, and a shameful look in his face. "Yes sir..."

Phillips turned away from him and started cruising down the line. I felt another pep talk coming.

"Gentleman...General Patton has said that wars are fought by by weapons, but they are won by men." I knew it.

I chomped on the inside of my cheek and tasted blood. There it was. The damned "M" word.

'_Is that so, Phillips? Well, then this WOMAN is gonna dedicate her first Jerry kill to you._'

"We are going to win this war because we have the best...men." He stopped in front of Steve as he said it, taking in his shortness and his frailness, and everybody snickered quietly. Once again, Steve acted as though he wasn't being baked under the Colonel's gaze, staring straight ahead with as much dignity as he could muster. I was impressed, despite myself.

Phillips sighed and continued. "And they're gonna get a lot better! Much...better." This time, I felt his eyes move over me, almost like he could feel the anger rolling off me, and I knew he was taking in my slim build.

Then, he said something that REALLY pricked my ears.

"The Strategic Scientific Reserve is an allied effort, made up of the best minds in the free world."

I'd never heard of that before.

"Our goal is to create the best army in history."

Mm, I bet that was the Nazi's goal, too.

"But, every army starts with one man."

I gritted my teeth so hard, it made my head hurt. Men, men, men. It never crossed his mind that a GIRL could be a part of that dream.

"At the end of this week, we will choose that man. He will be the first in a new breed of super soldier."

I almost choked on my own spit. So Keaton WASN'T full of shit! He had been right! All at once, I felt pissed, excited, and scared out of my mind. I wanted so badly to be chosen for that special program, I could feel the longing in my fingertips. That would be just what I needed, to show these stuck up, dusty soldiers what I could really do-

And then my smart side broke in, and my heart sank as I thought about it. I couldn't be the super man soldier. If they were serious, and I had to undergo some god forsaken experiment, I'd out myself as soon as I took my shirt off. As much as it pained me to realize it, I couldn't let myself be chosen. I had to fail, or risk being sent back home with my tail between my legs- or worse, to jail.

"And they will personally escort Adolf Hitler...to the gates of hell."

The words tasted bitter to me, where mere moments ago they had tasted sweet. I glanced down the line again. Steve's face was even MORE determined than before, and for a split second, I hated him. Despite being small, shrimpy, and funny looking, Steve Rogers had more of a chance than I did to be the special soldier. Because he was born with something extra swinging between his legs, and I was not. It sucked.

"Now...let's get to it, shall we?"


End file.
